Overture

As part of the lead-up to the 2009 New Music Festival at UCMO, Overture presents a new interview between Emmett Chapman and Sean Malone, Assistant Professor of Music Theory at UCMO. Check back often for news and updates about the Festival.

Hello Overture, I’m greatly looking forward to my encounter with your Music Department.  Below are my responses to my friend Sean Malone’s thought provoking questions:

1. The theme for the 2009 New Music Festival is “Innovation.” As a performer and improvisor do you feel that musical innovation-in the purest sense-is still possible? Or, has “innovation” become a euphemism for anything that is purportedly ‘new’ or ‘modern?’

Innovation is part of the “language” of human nature.  For one thing, each generation must rebel against the peer group that came before, especially the one before.  The greater the elders’ accomplishments, the more remote and inaccessible they become – tied to the past and isolated from current challenges.

2. Musical eras, as well as new styles and genres, are often better-understood and defined after the public has had considerable time to reflect and determine what impact has or has not been made (e.g. the Second Viennese School). To that end, do you think that a sense of musical “innovation” can be immediately identified, even if it’s not clearly defined? In other words, do you think we recognize musical innovation in a visceral and intuitive way, or is it something that needs to be nurtured and contextualized?

I’d say ten or twenty percent of us can truly recognize artistic innovation and the rest have to be told.  There’s a bell curve.  At one extreme end such recognition is almost infallible, instinctive, and if there were a stock market for talent, they’d become millionaires.  At the other end are those who follow trends and believe the reviews.  Their tastes in music and art identify them with their peer group but later become “dated”.  Somewhere in the middle of the curve are the music and art appreciators who understand the value of innovation if it is explained to them.

3. As an instrument inventor and builder, is it possible for you to describe what drives your sense of innovation? Is it something more akin to constantly refining your original and innovative conception of The Stick, or, is your fundamental conception of The Stick still flexible and captive to your imagination?

I spend almost equal time exploring Stick music (from compelling new sub-techniques to new discoveries in music theory) as I do in refining the instrument’s design and capabilities.  I created it for that reason, to explore worlds of music, the features and structure being merely incidental.  Because music has always guided my design and refinements, and because my music is still growing, I remain flexible as to the actual vehicle of this powerful two-handed string tapping method.   I’m now in the third prototype stage of a new Stick model with several radical innovations.  Ultimately, it wouldn’t have to be strings at all, but could be an electronic fingerboard synth controller with raised rubbery ridges for the strings and frets, each ridge of the “grid” bendable in all directions for expression, bending, swelling and timbre.

Best Regards, Emmett.

For more information about the instruments and innovations of Emmett Chapman, go to http://www.stick.com